TESO, AIADMK could create history with tacit action on fundamentals

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 23:54 GMT]The island transformed from colonial Ceylon into genocidal Sri Lanka has in the process witnessed two wars of brutal conquest in the last two hundred years, both of which were ultimately imperialist. The conquest of Kandy in 1815 by British imperialism bringing in the unitary state and the conquest of Vanni in 2009 by a strategic partnership of the US and Indian imperialism are not two different phenomena, if the aftermaths of the wars are compared and comprehended. The larger question arises for the peoples of the region, elsewhere, and especially for the people of Tamil Nadu in this context is whether they are going to succumb one after the other as in the past, or are going to create history for humanity by learning from history. The TESO meet will only turn into a crafty device if its convenors and participants don’t direct it to answer the fundamentals.

TamilNet Editorial Board

The genocide in the war and the continued annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils in a determined way in the aftermath of the war, with full facilitations of New Delhi and Washington, leaves no one in doubt that all voices for justice are non-effective on those who are decidedly deaf and blind.

Unless there is targeted pressure affecting vital interests no one is going to act.

The decision of the DMK chief Mr. M. Karunanidhi to convene the Tamil Eelam Supporters Organisation (TESO) meet itself is because of afflictions to vital interests.

The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jeyalalithaa has come out with a good beginning in unanimously passing a resolution in the State Assembly, demanding war crimes investigation on Mahinda Rajapaksa and sanctions against the genocidal State of Sri Lanka.

But the resolutions were of very little effect, as they were not targeted against the vital interests of the real culprits.

The TESO should be able to take it to a further level that Tamil Nadu would demand any government formed next in New Delhi to investigate the genocide so far facilitated by elements within its own New Delhi establishment.

Cutting across party lines, all major political parties in Tamil Nadu should be united in announcing on this point that it would be their policy in making the next government at the Centre and they should also work towards it with the other states in India.

The nexus of extra-parliamentary elements, business houses, intelligence operatives, former intelligence operatives, military minds, bureaucrats and media culprits which ‘entrenches’ India’s position to uphold the integrity of the genocidal state in the island could never be stopped unless democracy in India is orientated to send them the warning.

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Writing a few days back, Vikram Sood, a former chief of India’s RAW, said “We cannot have a situation where our regional leaders want to run a foreign policy independent of the Centre.”

Mr Vikram Sood, in his website, claims that he is the Vice President of the Observer Research Foundation's Centre for International Relations. The foundation is known for its links with the ‘Natchiappan move’ of luring the Eezham Tamil politicians in the island.

Sood was referring to Ms. Jayalalithaa calling for a referendum on Tamil Eelam [which has to be verified] and to Mr. Karunanidhi convening the TESO meet with the diaspora, and said that they were in direct conflict with India’s stand on a united Sri Lanka.

Such moves grow suspicions in the minds of the Sinhalese, the former RAW chief, who advocates for “building bridge” with the entire island, was worried.

In the last more than 60 years, if an esoteric group that has no responsibility to the people, were singing the same song to end up in the genocide and annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils, then either it should now shut up or should be made to shut up by bringing it under investigation.

No one needs to worry about regional leaders who are answerable to righteous sentiments of their people trespassing into foreign policy matters if the demand is going to be investigation of genocidal and criminal minds at the Centre. It is an internal matter but will course-correct the foreign policy to become crime-free, humanitarian and people-friendly.

TESO will be fundamentally a success if it could present the case to the peoples of India to prepare them for political action.

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However hard the ilk of Sood tries to appease, by implying a myth of Orissa connections of the Sinhalese, which no one in Orissa or in the island remembers, the outlook of the Sinhala state would be always for targeting India.

Writing in The Island on Tuesday, a Sri Lankan diplomat Dayan Jayatilleke justified the over-bearing Sinhala militarisation of the Tamil country, implying that the militarisation is necessary in the context of having a neighbour like India.

Dayan said: “A recent article in a respected paper in the region made the point that the military-civilian ratios in Kashmir as well as our neighbour’s north-eastern periphery are far less favourable to the military than the corresponding ratio in Sri Lanka’s North. Though there is indeed a case for a lighter military footprint, the pseudo-sophisticated argument of comparative ratios is specious, given that the balance of forces between our gargantuan neighbour and its neighbours across those troubled frontiers is overwhelmingly in favour of our neighbour, while that is manifestly not the case with the Sri Lankan military and its neighbourhood.”

Dayan’s parochial outlook of state is not prepared to accept that Eezham Tamils are a nation in the island.

If the Sinhala state is continuously pampered of its genocidal unity of the island and is allowed to militarize the Tamil country for its annihilation, wars will be sooner or later fought inside Tamil Nadu, considering the nature of the flow of contesting investments into the island.

Tamil Nadu should be able to tell in no uncertain terms to those who consider foreign policy a monopoly of theirs to first answer to the chronic national question in the island and then build bridges. If they can think of building bridges over genocide, they must be equally capable of thinking of building bridges after acting on a righteous solution universally appropriate for national questions facing genocide.

They are neglectful in thinking of options because there is no threat to their vital interests.

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Another writing appeared in The Hindu, by K. Venkataramanan last week, sees Mr. Karunanidhi being “seriously out of touch” in the wake of India’s “obsessive objective,” the unity of Sri Lanka, becoming “an entrenched global policy”.

According to The Hindu writer the Tamil Eelam project was never on, and the LTTE destroyed it leaving “the few surviving Tamil moderate politicians to pick up the shards of a nearly abandoned devolution discourse and work towards limited self-rule in the Tamil majority areas.”

The writer, seeing LTTE as responsible for the destruction of the Tamil Eelam cause contradicted himself when he said, “In more recent times, preserving Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity became an obsessive objective, and India was drawn into – largely in a moral sense, and to a lesser extent, materially, too – into the government’s military project to destroy the LTTE.

However, this time, the habitual psy-op war of The Hindu was due to anxiety at the TESO meet.

“What makes TESO a mockery of the predicament of the Tamils in Sri Lanka is the fact that they are more worried about their security and survival than resurrecting the separatist demand,” The Hindu article said.

When a group of elements involved in the genocidal war in various ways, starting from the failed peace facilitator Erik Solheim to The Hindu and petty collaborators among the Eezham Tamils, continue in an orchestrated way to attack the LTTE that is no more and fail to address or act on the comparatively Himalayan crimes of the genocidal state of Sri Lanka, and if they continue to place priority with panic on defending the unity of the genocidal state, even a layman could understand what they are and where they are.

Instead of realising the weakness of the enemies and design an effective strategy of struggle addressing at the real culprits, a section of diaspora Tamils choose to act on lines with the deviation tactics of agencies like the International Crisis Group (ICG) serving the very culprits.

Worrying about the ‘guts’ of the Eezham Tamils of middle class mentality, they devote their own guts to the service of the imperial culprits in calling for ‘re-structuring’ of the demands of Eezham Tamils.

In 2010, Ms Louise Arbour, the president and CEO of the ICG of a nebulous background, arrogantly denied the right to self-determination of Eezham Tamils merely on a provenance-cum-context basis. She was exposing the outfit’s intention of manipulating the freedom of expression of Eezham Tamils and almost declared a war on the diaspora. Since then, the outfit is infiltrating widely into the Tamil movements and activists, often hijacking their burning issues, in influencing the restructure of the fundamental cause of Eezham Tamils.

TESO with a backing of a different society, because of the grass roots of the DMK and VCK, is capable of sending a refreshing message to the international community of establishments, if it is directed suitably, and if it could rise above the materialistic lures of imperialism. Otherwise it will be just another tactic of deviation.

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Several opinions have been made on the TESO meet.

There are views that it is another tactic of the New Delhi establishment to lure Eezham Tamils away from the West and to weaken Ms. Jayalalithaa. There are views that it is nothing but the last trump of Mr. Karunanidhi to salvage his politics and the future of his party.

But TESO could contribute primarily in taking the issue to the masses in Tamil Nadu and beyond. It could contribute in sending the message to New Delhi and to the world. No one needs to worry how Colombo would look at it. Genocidal Colombo would behave in the same way whether there is a TESO meet, or no meet. It is for New Delhi to face if it thinks that any issues would arise out of it. Without fear Colombo never spared Tamils is the practical experience of Tamils.

If the TESO meet fails, the same people who now discourage the meet will interpret the failure in the same way they interpreted the last parliamentary elections in Tamil Nadu.

Mr. Karunanidhi and Ms. Jayalalithaa, playing roles at a crucial time should intelligently contribute to each other in actions on the issue of Eezham Tamils, if they wish to have their names in the history of Tamils as well as humanity in general.

But for everything, the TESO meet showing any signs of deviation would be interpreted adversely against the Eezham Tamils.

Demand to repeal the 6th Amendment for Eezham Tamils to freely voice their opinion and demand for an internationally conducted referendum to know their choice based on the right to self-determination, in the background of all what had gone before, should not be a technical problem to any of the participants. If there were any, then that itself is a serious issue for international action.